The weather outside is chilly and damp, but inside, at the various theaters and at the Tribeca Film Festival’s press center, the atmosphere is warm and friendly. It seems like I’ve been meeting with or interviewing a different film director every few minutes when I am not in a theater seeing a movie.

After watching a screening of Sons of Perdition—a gripping, eye-opening documentary about young men and women escaping religious tyranny here in the United States, particularly Utah—I stayed for the Q&A session that followed. Directors Tyler Measom and Jennilyn Merten are both young, bright, and articulate; they responded to questions from the audience with honesty, tact, and sincerity.

A few of the kids that appeared in the film were also there, which made this a very emotional time for everyone in the theater. These young victims of intolerance had been kept ignorant of the world outside their small, stifling community their whole lives. Imagine what it must be like for them to be in New York, the most cosmopolitan city in the world, to see themselves on the big screen, and then to be cheered by hundreds showing appreciation for their courage.

I also attended a roundtable discussion with the directors and the “stars” of the film. It was heartbreaking to witness the looks on the faces of these kids as they shyly answered very personal questions. They have been cut off from their families, probably for good, but they still love their parents and other relatives. They don’t blame their parents, who they know have been victims themselves of generations of indoctrination. What a journey these kids have had; and the best of it, I’m sure, is still to come.

At one of the press parties, I spoke with Tyler and Jennilyn, and we hit it off pretty well, so I was privileged later to conduct a video interview with them. They are very passionate about their film and about spreading the word against religious intolerance. The word is that the movie might be picked up by the BBC and HBO, so let’s hope that soon everyone will get a chance to see it.

Another director I spoke with at length is Sharon Yamato, who has put together a documentary short called Out of Infamy about a very dark episode in American history: the detention in concentration camps of over 110,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. I was shocked when she told me that I was the first person she talked to that knew about the camps. When I said the word “Manzanar,” her face lit up. She is a very humble lady, and she worries that people might not like her film. After all, Americans tend to sweep such incidents in our past under big and heavy rugs.

Then I was happy to meet the two young men, Geoffrey Alan Rhodes and Steven Eastwood, who directed a film titled Buried Land, “an inventive hybrid of fiction and documentary” that looks into the wild idea that fabled pyramids, older than those of Egypt, exist beneath the hills of central Bosnia. Geoffrey and Steven look more like punk rockers than filmmakers, and if their film is as engaging as they are, it should be a good one.